Switching on an abandoned lift (60s Express) 

Mordern elevators are safe, I build them

It is rare to get an abandoned building with electricity. The only ones I found was my 60s Otis car park that has since been demolished, and there was another one in London where I was repairing an abandoned lift, but then some person decided to turn the building into an unauthorized homeless shelter. I was considering asking the homeless people to let me in so I could continue to fix the lift, but I decided that wasn't a good idea. After the homeless people were evicted the building was secured and I was unable to get back in.

@@benolifts Thanks for the reply. I know it’s rare, just enjoyed the video and if you ever found another abandoned lift with power still running it would be cool to see if you could fully get one working. Also there was a video of one you found at Barts I believe before the major vandalism began. There was another one too but I forgot where it was.

Have you seen this series I did in 2017 of repairing and experimenting with some 60s Otis relay lifts in a demolition site... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-u60dOEEsXEc.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WiFK64n0yzA.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-crzZrlSvwAo.html

Thanks

The building will be a pile of rubble in a few months

@@benolifts is it getting demolished?

Yes

@@benolifts too bad

​@@benoliftsIs it gone now?

The lift was only just working. The relay logic wasn't working. The doors were not connecting safety. The tracks were dry and rubbing. The brake solenoid was stuck and worked intermittently after we oiled it.

@@benolifts True. 👍

I don't know if that was their intention, but the demolition people are not going to be pushing the main contactors to operate the lift! We actually found this lift switched on. Jordan almost got electrocuted because there was no other signs of electricity in the building and we assumed that there would be no electricity going to the lift. We switched of the lift when we left since it wasn't working and we were worried that other people may go in and start touching the relays thinking there is no power.

@@benolifts There could be any number of reasons a lone feed still has power in a building like this. The amount of dodgy stuff done in these places during the lifetime of the building is unbelievable. I worked at a high school 16 years ago where one of the grounds keepers was nearly killed when he used shears to cut through a copper water pipe under a building to remove it since the sink it had been for was removed years ago. What he didn't know was at some point after the sink was removed, an electrician had used the pipe as conduit to run a 3 phase cable that fed a new fuse board. Fortunately the shears were grounded to the copper pipe as they cut into the live cables. But the explosion melted the blades on the shears to the point that you could put 2 fingers through the space in their blades when they were fully closed. That same school also had a fuse board in one of the buildings that nobody knew the feed for. It could be turned off at the board, but the feed coming in to it was totally unknown to anybody. And the care taker and grounds staff had tried finding it in the evenings by turning things off at various feed cabinets around the school. Oh and also, they discovered by accident another board in a new building was fed by TWO DIFFERENT FEEDS!!!!! The school electrician was going to do some work on it so he turned off the feed at the feed cabinet in the grounds, but then when he checked the board it still had power. Turned out it was also being fed by another source from another building and that second source was unlabeled anywhere. I'd say the most likely explanation for this lift still having power is that it was never transferred over from the feed it was on during building construction. What often happens is before the permanent power system for the whole building is up and running, the construction company will get one of the internal lifts working on it's own separate feed directly from the street so they can use it during construction. But then what happens is nobody thinks to transfer it to the buildings main feed before they hand the building over to the owner when they finish it. And if the power company lose track of a temporary building site feed (this happens all the time) then it's entirely possible this lift spent its entire life operating on free electricity supplied on a separate feed the building owner was never billed for ever. The temporary meter is probably installed somewhere but after the construction company left it was never read again. This is the main reason power is left on in abandoned buildings. The power company just loses track of the feeds. They will disconnect power from feeds they know about if the bill isn't paid. But if they lose track of feeds and stop reading the meters then they never come back to disconnect them. www.thesun.co.uk/news/4227500/incredible-photos-show-abandoned-nuclear-bunker-turned-into-a-2million-a-year-weed-farm-as-three-men-are-jailed/ This is how those guys got free power for their growing operation. The power had been disconnected so nobody was ever checking from the power company. They just popped mains fuses back in at the street and hey presto, all the free power they wanted.

That is very interesting. There wasn't any other electricity running in the building apart from the lift. As the relay logic wasn't working, you couldn't even tell that there was still electricity going to the lift. We didn't realize until Jordan pressed a relay and we heard an electrical 50hz hum. Jordan almost got electucuted doing that. The electricity to the lift is almost certainly forgotten about.

@@benolifts It's amazing how many things like this get forgotten over time. If you are ever in an abandoned high rise with everything turned off there's still a fairly good chance you'll find a lone lift like this the construction company had working before the power system for the rest of the building was installed. And just like this one, a fairly good chance that lone lift will still have power. I even know a few stories of homeless people in several abandoned buildings in Auckland who have lived there for a number of years using the free electricity from a lift like this. One I am personally aware of involved the emergency generator for a radio station I worked at during the early 90's in Auckland. When the radio station moved out and that floor was converted back in to offices, the generator was forgotten. I helped myself to it and it now lives on my lawn as a back up generator for my house. There are two backup generators at my place, the radio station one is the little blue one. I might have given you the link for this before. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oDSquXQQs9c.html Anyway, when I took the generator the electrical feed to/from it from the 7th floor of the building (the generator was located in the basement) was still live (this was 4 years after the radio station had gone) So I just disconnected it and took it. I found out a number of years later that some homeless people had discovered this live feed in the basement (this was an open area anybody could just walk into under the building away from everything) and built themselves a comfortable little house making use of the free electricity from the 7th floor being paid for by the company up there who had no idea what was going on.

@@johnrauner2515 I read your comment, it's crazy to know how many thing who are abandonned have forgotten thing inside, like the electricity. Some month ago I saw a video of the urbex of an Hospital in USA, and they discoverd that inside the electricity was still working (by discovering a windows 98 computer who was working and some big freezer who was on and who was wasting electricity.

We are pressing the main contactors. The stop button is connected to the emergency stop safety relay, so it won't do anything in this situation.

It was in terrible condition. The doors were not locking. Safety circuit was not operating. Relay logic was not operational. Shaft doors were rusty and were rubbing when opening and closing. The motor looked liked it hadn't run in at least 5 years. The tracks were dry and the shoes were rubbing. The cables looked rusty. The motor brake was not working, and after oiling it, it was still getting stuck.

That’s the whole idea isn’t it?

@@punkybrewstershubby yea but he’s listed the issues in his last comment to prove that he assessed the conditions and knew what he was getting into before he rode it. Therefore, he already knew the conditions.

@@benolifts why wasn't the logic working? Had bits been removed?

I know

There is no power in the building

@@benolifts oh ok

I had a torch

hey windows xpnt this windows 11

There's Windows 11? Oh no... Hey guys this is Austin

hey Austin this is Otis lifts

@@windows7nt208 Yes